Scars on the body can still heal but not those left on the mind! Yet you think you have all time in the world to think on it?

Every once in a while I pick up a newspaper only to get horrified. Every
time I watch a TV and the reality strikes me and every moment I wondered over
spending a night all alone, the issue pinned me. Elders often ask us not
to get perturbed by such news, but it isn't that comforting either.

Last few months have seen back to back cases of young girls being
raped, mauled, assaulted, brutalized, harassed, shoved off a running train or
left locked in a house withoutfoodor water for months together. Umpteen cases of rape in a span of just
24 hours in every district of the nation used to sound dreadful; now it’s a
part and parcel of life. There would not be perhaps a single girl not having
one such frightful story in her kitty.

Asmediabrings these images to us in a 24x7 witness, the news seems to have anesthetized us out of our ability to empathize, react or protest. Are we a citizenry bereft
of any human emotion and conscience? Our silence condones crime. Our apathy is
their power source. Our indifference is the curtain these criminals hide
behind, each time they ruin a woman’s life.

More than twenty cases of rape and molestation were reported in Haryana,
in a month; let alone Delhi and rest of the country. And mind you, twenty is just
another number which have been figured out; Heaven knows how many complaints
the police refused to lodge. Add on to that, the number of cases which were not
reported at all due to varied reasons like family reputation, the victim being
too ashamed or afraid, the victim being murdered etc.

The toll of gang rapes seems to be increasing day by day. An ongoing
struggle for emancipation of women seems unending; or, shall I say, redundant?

Going through a few back end stories of some of those cases, we find
out that reasons for such inhumanity is that the accused wanted to teach the
victim a lesson. Lesson for what? Because she refused to surrender before their
unending, unethical pleasures; because she retaliated to their molestation;
because she raised her voice!

What I see, the more such cases are being unearthed, the more these
heinous crimes are happening! From one end of the country we come to know about
a 6-year girl being raped by a father, and the entire “rape-culture” itself
changes. Worse becomes the worst. Their inner animal would have mocked, “What
an idea Sirji! Why the hell was I hunting down outside home when I have so many
daughters/cousins/sisters?”

The moment an acid attack case hit our ears, galore of such cases started
piling up. Probably, they got yet another Sirji’s idea. “A 50 bucks acid would
satisfy my virility; or a lesson for her should satisfy my ego.”

You always see what you tend to see. They choose to see various methods
to answer their overexcited hormonal calls from the pain and agony of women.
And the government, society, feminists, pro-feminists and thinkers talk of
emancipation of women’s destiny! It’s not their mentality, its sickness; they
are the sufferers of low self esteem. You arrest them today and then release
tomorrow to feed their sexual drives again. India has now become a land of wild
and vile.

Who are these men walking with us in the crowd and committing such
heinous crime? Bringing on such news should make them realize of what they are
doing. But is it happening? From any angle, do you see a sense of penance in
their eyes? It’s not. It’ll not. Such news will give them new ideas to continue
with their desires, ideas to sodomize! That’s it.

No, I am not asking to keep such news at low; not to raise your voice.
But only raising voice won’t work. A story should always end with a moral. The
headlines must change from “A girl was allegedly raped” to “An attempted rape
was FIRed and a finger has been taken out of his body.” Personally, I have
surrendered hoping that the mentality of men would change. No, the situation
would only keep getting worse. No education, morale or therapy can make them
gentlemen. Because they are not men, they are animals! Capital punishment is an
easy walk. That girl who is gets raped dies every day; every morning waking up
she fights with herself, fights with the mockery of the society, fights
answering how ‘exactly’ was she raped, fights for being a ‘She’! Capital
punishment doesn't justify those tears. Such people should also be agonized and
tortured to death!

2 comments:

Tulika, your poem touched my heart. And believe me, I am crying right now. I was so frustrated that I first tweeted, then wrote on my blog and finally I think this poem helps me vent a lot of restlessness inside me.